Chandigarh, Aug. 12 -- The Chandigarh administration on Monday evening invoked the Haryana Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), 1974, to thwart various employee unions from going on strike. Issuing an order, UT chief secretary Rajeev Verma said the Act was being invoked to ensure proper services or maintaining supplies, public safety, health or sanitation and the maintenance of public order, necessary for the life of community at large. The order will remain in force for six months. The hospital administration and various employee unions have been at loggerheads over a host of issues, including arrears, salary and service conditions for years together now, resulting in frequent strike calls. The Punjab and Haryana high court has repeatedly stepped in and stayed the strike notices, remarking that pendency of any service dispute cannot become cause for an employee to abstain from work in a hospital, which is an essential service. Even on August 7, the high court restrained the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of PGIMER Contract Workers' Union from resorting to any strike, abstentions or protest in the future. Disposing of a clutch of petitions from PGIMER, filed against strike calls by employee unions given on different dates since 2024, the court also prohibited JAC from using the hospital premises for furthering the union activities except at designated places. "By no means, the union activities will obstruct or hinder the uninterrupted movement of patients, their family members, doctors, visitors, etc. within PGIMER, Chandigarh," the court said, adding that in case of breach of the order, the authorities will proceed to initiate the process of cancellation of their registration. ".it would be pertinent to observe that PGIMER, Chandigarh is a premier institute of national importance, which is catering to patients not only from Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh but also from various states such as Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, etc," the court said while passing the order....